Dirty water raising health risk in flooded occupied Kashmir

ISLAMABAD: A health crisis is looming after massive flooding engulfed much of the Kashmir Valley with countless bloated livestock carcasses now floating across the waterlogged territory.

Emergency workers are battling to prevent waterborne diseases like cholera from spreading as fetid water swilled around the Kashmir Valley more than a week after the worst flooding in the past over sixty years.

The scale of the disaster is unprecedented for the occupied territory KMS reported.

Doctors are already seeing cases of diarrhea skin allergies and fungus among the population. Rescue workers are rushing in medical aid water pumps and purification systems.

Dr Swati Jha with the aid group Americares said that the most essential need right now is that of clean water. More than 75,000 people were still in partly submerged homes in Srinagar city which has a population of more than one million. Roads in the city have been transformed into stagnant canals strewn with wreckage trash and dead animals.

Floating carcasses have become a big source of worry with most houses still waterlogged. “We are struggling to get in touch with government health officials,” said Abul Syed Rahman who owns three hotels in occupied Kashmir.

Altaf Hussain, a paediatrician who was treating flood victims in improvised camps complained of shortages of life saving drugs intravenous fluids and sanitary products. “We need aerial fumigation as these waters can cause waterborne diseases including cholera,” he said.

The floods have claimed over five hundred lives in the territory so far. The puppet authorities maintained that the cost of damages to the property may run into billions of dollars.